Sourcing Strategy

Infrastructure operators, such as railways, must invest great sums into maintaining and increasing the performance of their infrastructure. Despite this amount, the market for suppliers of infrastructure operators is a very specialised market due to the requirements involved. This has resulted in a situation in which the number of providers of the required technologies has continuously declined following a boom period involving the construction of large infrastructure networks. Therefore it is particularly railways, but also other network operators, that find themselves in a restricted competitive situation.

In particular the need for functional reliability and the associated liability for malfunctions can lead to a type of “dependency” that is difficult for infrastructure operators. Decades of experience with this procurement issue have resulted in a number of strategies that quattron has implemented at infrastructure operators. Among other things, quattron played (and still plays) a key role in the preparation and introduction of “NeuPro”.

While this process is frequently associated with an examination of the technical situation and the procurement of a new technology, such as ERTMS for railways at the moment, quattron also focuses on operational requirements. This ensures that the technology can not only be procured, but can also be implemented at the functional level.

Numerous infrastructure projects have demonstrated how expensive the costs of operation and maintenance of new technology can be, particularly if these costs were not already considered at the beginning. Therefore quattron also delivers calculations and assessments of the service levels for maintenance and operations, which must be considered.

Contact

For more information, please contact us via email at sourcing@quattron.com.